Robin said that the experience of waiting for a bus is different from waiting at a commuter rail station, and the dataset is structured accordingly. “A commuter is waiting for the 8:24, not train number 604,” he said, adding that the information is designed to be intuitive. He also stressed that the real-time updates are intended to warn commuters about 10-20 minute delays, not major system outages like those resulting from a frozen switch or a fallen tree. The MBTA’s alert system, available as an RSS feed, serves this purpose and officials are urging developers to incorporate T-Alerts into their real-time commuter rail apps. Updates are available for all MBTA commuter rail lines but, for now, the live data is not available on Google Transit. Because this is a beta release, the MBTA is encouraging developers and their customers to pass along feedback about the data. Read more about the dataset here.